


Es Mentiras

by Nemainofthewater



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Amnesia, Don't copy to another site, Gen, Helen has found a new toy, Michael lives!, canon-typical spiral stabbing, creepiness, he might have preferred not to but he lives, set in some nebulous series 4 timeline, the corridors, trick - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-30
Updated: 2019-09-30
Packaged: 2020-11-08 09:43:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,354
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20833400
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nemainofthewater/pseuds/Nemainofthewater
Summary: He wakes in the corridors. He wakes in the corridors and all he knows is that he doesn’t know. That his mind is as blank of the pages of an old book. No, not an old book. Of a parchment scroll that’s been written and rewritten, the words scraped off its surface time and time again until all that’s left is the memory of knowledge and a thin, brittle base, over-scraped and raw.





	Es Mentiras

**Author's Note:**

  * For [cher](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cher/gifts).

> Written for the 2019 Trick or Treat Exchange.

He wakes in the corridors. He wakes in the corridors and all he knows is that he doesn’t know. That his mind is as blank of the pages of an old book. No, not an old book. Of a parchment scroll that’s been written and rewritten, the words scraped off its surface time and time again until all that’s left is the memory of knowledge and a thin, brittle base, over-scraped and raw.

He lies there for a moment, minutes ticking by as the wrongness presses into his mind, stronger and stronger until the terror of inertia outweighs his terror of the unknown. He sits up and as his eyes adjust he sees them. The corridors.

They twist and bend and the green carpets hurt his eyes and the paintings on the wall spiral and whirl away from him until his head is pounding. He finds himself staring blankly at the wall, looking into the portrait of the corridors of a man looking at the portrait of the corridors of a man looking at the portrait of the corridors of a man-

He wrenches his head to the side with difficulty and is quietly sick. Or at least he tries to: instead of bile or vomit what emerges out of his mouth…is paint. Bright yellow paint. He gags, but he can’t control it now that it’s started and it flows, thick and viscous in a never-ending stream. It tastes…it tastes…It doesn’t taste like paint, but he doesn’t know what it tastes like-maybe the feeling of running round and round, trying to run to escape but never quite making it out, it’s the feeling of things shifting, slowly imperceptibly but never enough that you can draw attention to it because you don’t know, you can’t tell, whether that door was really there or whether your mind is playing tricks on you, and what are you without your mind, without your mind, without your mind…

He breathes heavily. The paint has stopped coming. Maybe it was never there. He squeezes his eyes shut, tightly, blocking out the impossible geometry and the dizzying corridors, but it’s no use. Because they’re already painted onto his mind’s eye, branded in. He can’t tell the corridors apart, can’t navigate his way through them, but he knows that it doesn’t matter. He doesn’t want to know. He doesn’t want to escape the corridors-he wants to get lost in them, stagger off into them until he can’t remember what he’s running from.

“Well well,” comes a voice from behind, and he spins around so quickly that he nearly loses his balance only catching himself on the strangely warm walls of the corridors at the last minute, “What have we got here?”

He tries not to whimper. Does so anyway. Because he’s not sure who or what he’s talking to. It’s in front of him, hair a mess of dark, wild curls that stick out at improbable angles, limbs too long and bent at impossible angles. He doesn’t notice that though. Not at first. Instead his attention is drawn by the smile on its face: wide and toothy and wrong-so wrong, a rictus of a grin.

“Who-” he says, “Who are you?”

“Don’t you know?” It tilts its head to the side and looks at him. He tries not to meet its eyes, tries to avoid the spiralling fractals that make up it irises, but he doesn’t manage.

“No,’ he says, “I don’t know. I don’t know who you are, or who I am or what’s going on.”

“Hmmm. Curious. I suppose you’re what’s left then. The chewed up, undigested remains. Or maybe you’re us-”

It walks closer to him and tilts his head up with its fingers, razor sharp and full of danger. He freezes, acutely aware of them stroking up and down his unprotected throat. The fingers scrape up and down his neck and around his cheeks, but don’t actually pierce the skin. Not yet.

“-confused, broken. Lying to yourself.”

There are fingers running through his hair now, not as gentle as before, pulling his head back. He can see blond curly strands dropping to the floor beside him as it falls into a rhythm, pulling and tugging and not letting go, not for a minute.

“Helen hated you,” it said musingly, “But I think that you’re just-sad. Useless.”

It leant even closer: “You’re not even feeding me, little spiral,” it said, “Not even worth the trouble of letting you roam our corridors. Or rather, my corridors now.”

It laughs, a strange broken thing that makes him want to cover his ears and cower to the floor. Instead he stiffens and avoids its glare, staring up at the ceiling instead. There are mirrors attached to it as well with subtle, etched with spirals along the edges that flicker and shimmer in the harsh glow of the electronic lights.

“Little spiral, little spiral,” it chants, “I’m going to have so much fun with you, little spiral.”

A sharp pain and then something is dripping down his face, catching on his ear and spilling out onto the floor. He doesn’t want to look at it. He does. It’s red this time, but not blood. Thick, congealed, so dark that it would be easy to mistake it for mud…Why-why. What is this?

“Please,” he says, “Let me go.”

Another sharp pain and then it’s dragging its fingers down his cheeks until he’s sure that they’re red and dripping in the mockery of tears.

“Let you go?” It laughs again, and he cringes away, unheeding of the finger or the claws or the fluid that weeping out of him, “Why would I do that?”

It reaches out and hugs him close, ignoring the squirming as he tries to escape. Its body is full of sharp corner and impossible angles: he’s expecting that. He’s…it’s not fine but he’s getting used to that. No, it’s the fact that he can hear its heartbeat as he’s squashed against its chest, that the skin that he can feel is warm and smooth as if its owner had once taken a great deal of care over it. It’s the fact that it smells like oranges, bright and citrusy and completely incongruent.

“No little spiral,” it says, “I think that I’ll keep you for myself. Unless…” Its grip loosens and he takes the opportunity to stumble back, scrabbling against the floor as he tries to get as far away as possible.

“Friends…give friends gifts,” it said slowly, “Helen always gave gifts to her friends and clients. She would go to Waitrose and pick up a bottle of wine and hand it over and she would smile but deep down inside she would want to smash it against the wall and scream scream and scream…” It gave him an appraising look. “You would scream for me. You would scream like a good present should.”

Reaching forward, it takes him by the shoulder, fingers sinking deeply into his flesh and pushes him through the door. The door that hadn’t been there.

It opens into a small office, packed with dusty boxes and old-fashioned tape recorders. He feels a pang of familiarity deep in his chest and an answering wave of hatred, deep and visceral, rises in response. He gasps in pain and recognition and then he feels it. He’s being watched.

“Helen?” the man in the office asks, “Helen what-”

“Jon!” Helen (if that’s what its name is) trills, “I’ve brought you a present!”

Jon rises to his feet and then jerks back down, pulled by the chains tethering him to the desk, “_Michael_?”

“I found him wandering the corridors,” Helen says and he flinches back as Jon’s eyes bore into him, drilling into his head until he’s laid bare, flayed and supplicant before the laser intensity of his focus.

“I-I can’t…”

“But Archivist,” Helen says, “Don’t you want to _know_?”

Something sharpens in Jon’s gaze then, something hungry and dark and other and despite himself, he finds his mouth opening and he says: “Statement of Michael Shelly-oh god what are you-on his death and subsequent resurrection.”

**Author's Note:**

> Well, I mean *scuffs feet and avoids eye contact* you did say you'd like to see Michael survive... 
> 
> I hope that you enjoy it, and thank you for providing so many good prompts!  
I am on Tumblr as [Nemainofthewater ](https://nemainofthewater.tumblr.com)


End file.
